Two days ago I offered a free ad spot on my site for fellow indie devs. My goal was to give what little exposure I can provide to some like-minded devs who could use a free boost (who couldn’t?). I also wanted to use it as a place where I make honest recommendations about games I enjoy playing. This seemed to be a simple and low-cost way to do that (the time it takes to insert a new ad is minimal, after that it’s basically maintenance-free).

Nothing’s as simple as it seems

In the past couple days I’ve gotten a handful of “submissions” from devs who wanted to take me up on my offer. Some were from people I know, some were from people who already knew I liked their game, and some were from people I’ve never talked to who were — as many devs are — looking for a way to get some free exposure for their struggling game. I’ve been there, I know how you feel!

In thinking about this, there are three groups of people that benefit from this kind of initiative. Depending on which of these groups I want to focus on will change how I approach this kind of thing.

Visitors to this site

People appreciate recommendations and word of mouth when buying games, far more than any of the other myriad ways we might hear of a game. That’s why I wanted to approach this as “games I honestly recommend” rather than just “advertising.” I’ve actually directly contacted the developers of some of my favourite games, to ask for an ad to put on my site.

If this group were my focus, one approach to finding good games to recommend would be to ask others for their favourite games, not including games they made themselves. This might be a good way to find some good games, but doesn’t necessarily help you if you are in the next group…

Game developers

Part of this experiment is to help out other struggling devs by providing exposure to good games that are having a hard time with visibility. I’ve received an unbelievable amount of support from the dev community and want to give back in ways that I’m able. If devs were the focus, I’d open it up and post every ad that was sent to me in the hope that it might help some of you raise your visibility a bit. But as I’ve said before, this goes against one of the primary reason for doing it: giving good recommendations to my site visitors.

Myself

Let’s be honest here, I like playing good games, and having devs send me promo codes for good games is even better. And yes, I’m using LinkShare, so I might even get a few bucks out of it. If I made myself the focus, I’d push to get as many ads and promo codes as possible, but this was never the reason for this thing. I also don’t have time to become a full-out review site, trying new games all day.

Conclusion

In the end it’s going to work out roughly in this priority, all based on how much spare time I have to spend on this kind of thing:

• If I find an indie game I want to recommend, I’ll contact the dev directly and ask for an ad, if they’re interested.
• If I know you or we’ve chatted on Twitter and you’ve got a game you want me to try, let me know and I’ll have a look. If I turn you down, I’ll try to give some feedback on what I didn’t like about the game.
• If someone recommends someone else’s game to me, I’ll also have a look. If I like it, I’ll contact the dev directly.
• If we’ve never talked, well, sorry, but you’re down here. I’ll still try to look at the game and even give some feedback, but again, this is a spare-time kind of thing for me.

I’ll still try to look at anything people send me, but for me it all comes down to the amount of time spent on this. I’m not trying to be a game review site. I wanted to do this because I figured it wouldn’t take up a lot of my time, wouldn’t cost me anything, and might help some others. I don’t have much spare time right now (running two businesses from home with four kids in the house – you can imagine), so I’m just going to take this as it comes. I definitely don’t want this to turn into a big “thing”!